Too Much ‘Management’ & Not Enough Agile in Your Agile Tool?

Anyone feel like the clutter required by your management overhead cuts into the team’s productivity?  It’s interesting. Agile tools were born at the team level — created by developers and for developers to solve a team need. Yet somewhere along the way, agile evolved and agile tools evolved right along with it — into this big, hairy system that shows way more than the team needs to get their jobs done. I understand enterprise tools are necessary for roll-up and reporting purposes at the program and portfolio management levels, but someone needs to bring the tool (or some form of it) back to the team level so developers and testers can focus on their jobs.

A dashboard for development teams

VersionOne’s latest feature, just introduced, called “TeamRoom,” is the answer to this problem. I’ve had the luxury of playing with TeamRoom for over a month now, and it looks pretty cool – you may want to check it out as well. It’s like nothing else on the enterprise agile tool market today. While everyone (including VersionOne) is catering more and more to the enterprise, TeamRoom brings the focus back to the team. It is a dedicated, team-based environment designed to support the daily activities of today’s agile development teams, helping them plan, track and collaborate without all the added noise. TeamRoom lets the team uniquely configure the tool with team mascots, personal avatars, custom views and their own WIP limits. The team’s personality takes front-and-center, while still satisfying the visibility needs of the enterprise.

If you haven’t already seen it, I encourage you to check it out; it’s pretty freakin’ awesome: http://www.versionone.com/Product/Agile-TeamRoom/. If you want more than a peek, register for a live demo, scheduled for November 8, 13 and 20.